Crimea Memorial Church

The Crimea Memorial Church, officially Christ Church, is an Anglican church in Istanbul's Beyoglu district and the only British on-site memorial to soldiers killed in the Crimean War. It was built between 1858 and 1868 to a design by George Edmund Street, one of the leading English neo-Gothic architects, on land donated by Sultan Abdulmecid I. The austere High Gothic of pointed-arch windows and flying buttresses looks startling in the Ottoman streetscape, and Florence Nightingale moved in the circle that organised the fundraising. After decades of closure the church reopened in 1991 and now hosts a small English-speaking congregation and a community centre. Visitors are welcome outside services.